Keep a Waterproof Emergency Envelope With Cash and Copies of Vital Documents

If you had to leave your home in five minutes — fire, flood, earthquake — what would you grab? Prepare a waterproof envelope or pouch containing: photocopies of your passport and ID, a list of emergency contacts, your insurance policy numbers, some cash in small bills, and copies of any critical medical information. Keep it somewhere accessible, and tell someone you trust where it is.

You'll probably never need it. But if you do, you'll have the most essential information with you while everything else is still being sorted out. The five minutes it takes to prepare this could save you days of chaos.